Most Entrepreneurship Support Organizations Are Vampires

A couple of months ago Ablorde Ashigbi, a current startup founder and former VC, wrote a blog post comparing the two gigs and this quote jumped out at me: “Wasting a founder’s time is equivalent to taking life from a company.”

I couldn’t agree more with Ablorde. If you’re wasting a founder’s time, intentionally or unintentionally, you’re sucking away his/her lifeblood and contributing to the potential demise of that company. Unfortunately, most entrepreneurship support organizations (ESOs) waste a lot of founders’ time and are, therefore, vampires.

Remember that Justin Timberlake movie where everyone had a certain amount of time left in their lives and that time was used as currency? That’s what life is like for a small business owner – fighting the clock to ensure they’re able to accomplish enough before their company’s resources run out and it dies.

When an ESO has a drawn-out registration process, or requires a business owner to participate in programming that isn’t helpful in order to access programming that is, or hosts events that don’t add value, or make introductions that won’t lead anywhere, they’re wasting the time of that founder and bringing that company closer to its death.

Yes, this might sound dramatic, but it’s true.

Therefore, ESOs and the foundations that fund them should be intensely aware of the ratio of value to time in their offerings for entrepreneurs and ensure they’re always streamlining processes to offer the most effective assistance in the shortest amount of time.